fatbird

51 ms·

661.
by fatbird 7y ago
Ventilators are a major shortcoming in the U.S. response to coronavirus only because earlier mitigation efforts (i.e., mass testing) were utterly ignored. South Korea demonstrated clearly that mass testing was the most effective means of i
662.
by fatbird 7y ago
Efficiently incurring is like having a high volume credit card that you constantly pay off: lots of cash moving through, but debt isn't building up. Withstanding cumulative effects is like continually re-financing your home to pull mor
663.
by fatbird 7y ago
With all due respect, I think you're missing the point. It's not about whether one is, or should be, tough enough, or is overly sensitive. As with technical debt, there's necessarily going to be a certain amount of emotion
664.
by fatbird 7y ago
There's a whole lot of daylight between unregulated capitalism and command economies.
665.
by fatbird 7y ago
Except the whole point of human governance is to delegate that enforcement to a third party that is a just and neutral arbiter. Unless you want to revert to a state of nature and anarchy without laws or money, you're going to have tha
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by fatbird 7y ago
The field of moral philosophy has extensive literature on exactly this subject. The NYTimes has an 'ask an ethicist' column. Every hospital has an ethics board with prepared guidelines on patient triage in times of crisis. That
667.
by fatbird 7y ago
it increases the reward for being wealthy, which promotes more productive behaviour from society at large. It encourages rent-seeking behaviour, which is not necessarily productive, and in times of crisis, demonstrably not so.
668.
by fatbird 7y ago
There's really only one reason to choose mongo over a competent RDBMS, and that's schemalessness at the database level--which most users of mongo then toss away by adding a schema package at the code layer. If your data is relativ
669.
by fatbird 7y ago
I've previously alerted the mods to threads of discussion within a post where one user was calling for the mods to nuke a blatantly anti-semitic post, and I emailed them. My email got a response, the plaintive posts in the thread didn
670.
by fatbird 7y ago
I don't think you were trolling, but you were addressing the mods while aiming at the users, which is a coy sort of tactic to have a meta-discussion. Why not be more direct and address the community about whether a broader range of ac
671.
by fatbird 7y ago
The mods don't read threads, and don't respond to questions directed at them. Traffic on HN is too high for them to actively monitor. They depend upon users emailing them to alert them to issues with content. Meta-comments like
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by fatbird 7y ago
I think he means in terms of defining and controlling orthodoxy.
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by fatbird 7y ago
Five pilots lined up. "Ok, we're offering a $300 voucher to the airline willing to give up this slot... $300... ok, United, we're bumping you, you can pick up your voucher at the information desk."
674.
by fatbird 7y ago
They were slowing the phones to preserve battery life, giving the appearance of longer useful battery lifespan. Without that, people would have been upgrading phones (or replacing batteries) sooner anyway, which seems, financially, like a
675.
by fatbird 7y ago
why not deflect them into the atmosphere to burn up?
676.
by fatbird 7y ago
I work for a digital services agency currently working with several provincial governments, and have some perspective on this. I call it "the IBM hangover". At some point, someone gives IBM or various consultants millions of doll
677.
by fatbird 7y ago
There's a difference between the minimal standard of raising a child to functioning adulthood, which is what orphanages generally manage, and raising a well-adjusted, emotionally healthy person who's not held back, having been giv
678.
by fatbird 7y ago
I read the Rust Programming Language book over Christmas and it's a very good introduction to it, probably one of the best I've seen for any language. It's got a good voice, and it's very good about putting enough conte
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by fatbird 7y ago
I've tested both and, as of a few years ago, the Surface was still laggier than the Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro. I bought the pro and a pencil just for digital drawing/painting, and any perceivable lag is a killer. I'd been
680.
by fatbird 7y ago
No, but you usually don't know what will be the poorly performing part or in need of optimization, beyond the macro level. Don't check your brain at the door, but don't overthink it too early. Someone else cites old systems
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by fatbird 7y ago
Once you've been convicted of sex trafficking, yes.
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by fatbird 7y ago
It allowed Epstein to launder his reputation as a sexual predator and trafficker. Even with his donations recorded as "anonymous", he remained a conduit and effective networker for the Media Lab. Bill Gates donated $2,000,000,
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by fatbird 7y ago
A better example is "tapping": a quick backhand to a male's crotch, trying to hit the testicles hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to incapacitate. Riot Games' COO, Scott Gelb, got two months of unpaid leave after
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by fatbird 7y ago
When I say "any competent philosopher", I'm being specific to the Western philosophical tradition. Up through the 19th century, any education in philosophy, classics, or the humanities was virtually certain to include readin
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by fatbird 7y ago
It's important to understand that his attitude and behaviour were common at the time, but also that the means of condemning it and punishing it were much more hidden then (and invisible to us today): whisper networks among women to kee
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by fatbird 7y ago
One of the reasons for calling out Asimov like this is to establish that the norms that allowed him to get away with his behaviour are no longer acceptable, and to prevent this generation from pointing to them as models or excuses. There&#
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by fatbird 7y ago
This comment shouldn't be downvoted: It gets at a low level asymetry in the problem. Only some men are actively problematic, but the combination of some problematic men and most non-problematic men tolerating or excusing their behavi
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by fatbird 7y ago
Yes, men are also the victims of sexual harassment, assault and rape. It's surprising that acknowledging this is frequently presented as evidence that women don't have it that bad in this respect.
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by fatbird 7y ago
How do you find that undecidable proposition? You derive it from axioms. You can't declare it axiomatic if you can't find it because it's undecidable. The big idea that the Incompleteness Theorem torpedoed was that it's
690.
by fatbird 7y ago
I've had this discussion before with ed-tech disruptors, and beyond the points you mention, is another more subtle but more important one: every problem a child has outside of the classroom presents itself as a barrier to learning insi

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